References and DBS Checks

This past week we’ve heard from 2 of our references that the questionnaire they need to fill in has arrived and we’ve been to County Hall with our identification documents to initalise the DBS check.

Firstly I would like to say how lucky we are to have the support of our friends and family during this process. One of our references in particular, despite both her and her husband having to work full-time in relatively inflexible jobs and being parents of a 1 year old little cutie she has found the time to speak to us about the questions she’s been asked as part of our reference. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I thank her for doing it she just dismisses me and says it’s an honour for her to do it. We are so lucky to have such strong support.

There was a question about how much support we’re likely to get from our friends and family which she said would be really easy to fill in. She pointed out we could be quite unusual as a same-sex couple in that every generation of both our families from the 80-something Grandma downwards are being supportive of our adoption journey, even excited for us.

We certainly have a strong support network around us, that is for sure.

The DBS check was relatively efficient, we popped into County Hall yesterday afternoon, was greeted by the receptionist who didn’t have a clue why we were there. I presented her with the letter that we received inviting us in and she phoned the number on the letter to tell them we were there. Someone we had been in email contact with over the last week or so came out of some back office area and whipped away our documents leaving us in the reception area to wait the 30 minutes or so it took her to process them.

She explained that we would both be getting an email from the DBS check service and we needed to login to the website and complete the details. I felt my phone vibrate during the drive home, and once we got back I checked and it turned out to be the email arriving.

Completing the details was relatively simple, they required our National Insurance number and 5 years worth of addresses, other than that just to give permission for the checks. Mine was fine, but my partner realised that they had put his passport number in incorrectly. As I am writing this post he’s just told me that they’ve corrected it for him so that’s all good. I’m glad he spotted it because I didn’t even check that mine were right, I think I tend to be too trusting of ‘officials’ perhaps that’s something I should redress.

All in all, we’re moving forward, still in the early stages though. We’ve got a workshop to attend on Thursday which will be interesting!